


Unleashed

by princenimoy



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Getting Back Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, post-TOS breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24098221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princenimoy/pseuds/princenimoy
Summary: As the five-year mission draws to a close, Kirk must confess his feelings to Spock. He doesn’t know he’s taking the biggest risk of his life. Explores the implied K/S narrative of The Motion Picture.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61





	Unleashed

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much to @thylaforever on tumblr for the beta help.

Captain Kirk was uncharacteristically quiet as Spock accompanied him on an evening walk-through of the _Enterprise_.

“Shall we stop here?” Kirk asked upon reaching the officers’ lounge. “I’m thirsty,” he said, although he sat still for the next twenty minutes, holding his glass of water in one hand without drinking it.

The end of the five-year mission was a little over a month away. Neither had acknowledged it in an informal setting.

Spock failed to initiate an enduring conversation three times. Kirk’s eyes were slightly bloodshot, a symptom of fatigue. “If you are fatigued, I will retire,” he said finally, rising.

“No, stay,” Kirk said, rising also. He studied Spock’s face and his posture. As usual, the Vulcan gave nothing away.

Spock studied Kirk in turn, the air tense.

“Take off your shoes,” Kirk added, smiling.

“Very well,” Spock replied amiably and untied his boots.

He took off his shoes and joined Kirk where he was standing thoughtfully. He looked uncomfortable.

“It’s been some mission, hasn’t it, Stretch,” Kirk said.

Spock blinked at the nickname that Kirk hadn’t used in some time. “Jim.”

Kirk placed his hands on Spock's arms.

Sensing the resolve through the touch, the Vulcan stiffened.

Kirk stood admiring the face of his best friend, his brother in arms Hephaestion. The one. From Day One.

He sighed, and for once in his life got to the point. He blurted out, "Spock, it's always been you. You know it's always been you. Say you love me too."

Spock’s eyes widened beneath the hood of his brow. His lips parted, but he seemed at a loss for words.

"Spock," Kirk repeated.

Spock's brow furrowed, as if to shut out what he was hearing. “I did not intend to mislead you,” he said at last.

Kirk stared, dumbfounded, and let his grip fall. “What?”

“It seemed logical to abet camaraderie with my commanding officer. I regret that I am unable to reciprocate your feelings,” he replied evenly, not quite able to bring himself to fold his hands behind his back. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Don’t you lie to me. You’re lying.”

“No, Captain,” Spock said gently, looking him straight in the eye.

The finality to the words was like a punch.

“I see,” said Kirk.

Spock excused himself.

Kirk stood completely still. It sank in that he had altered their relationship irrevocably. The confrontation was as permanent as murder.

Shod in his stocking feet, Spock tore through the corridor toward the turbo lift. The CMO was among the few startled crewmen he flew past on his long legs. McCoy barely caught a glimpse, but went white at the sight of the stiff-lipped, anguished face. With black, black eyes. Black as the Devil’s.

By the time McCoy reached the lounge, Kirk had stumbled and seized the corner of a table for support.

Spock had smothered his own agony so deeply that it spilled into Kirk’s consciousness through the link. Unbeknownst to either man, Kirk was grieving for two.

“Jim,” McCoy muttered, glancing at Spock’s discarded boots. “What the hell.”

Kirk sobbed with his mouth closed and burst into tears. McCoy joined him on the carpet.

“Tell me what to do, Bones,” Kirk croaked, smiling in the way that people who are crying sort of smile. “What do I do?”

Spock, alone in his dark quarters, pursed his lips, wrinkling the skin on his chin. His arms felt raw where Kirk had touched him, like a branding. He had an illogical urge to scrape at himself. He straightened his shirt.

Pain ripped through the anesthesia of his inadequate “shields.” The clack of Kirk’s first steps he took off the transporter pad five years ago. Spock recognized him at once. As what, he had no idea.

He tugged again at the hem of his shirt.

The necessity to adhere to his philosophy was not compatible with his desire for the captain. But while a hedonistic motivation could be dismissed, denying his captain in this way was a torment of no equal. A pain he found inexplicably impossible to expel.

Step by step, he had performed correctly and logically with regard to his captain. Yet he had failed. On Vulcan, he had dismissed his failure to muzzle his emotions as tenderness of age. To prove his mastery over himself, he had joined Starfleet. Be surrounded by humans, and yet be the Vulcan. And he had failed.

He slammed his shields down as far as they could go. It was as if there were some kind of debris in the way. Whatever it was, he beat it down, down, with all his might. It persisted.

_There is a way to guarantee success. To banish this weakness forever…_

***

Kirk had looked death straight in the barrel on several occasions. Pure hell on one. He watched the shuttlecraft disappear and it was worse.

***

Spock calculated twenty-four point nine standard seconds before he must once and for all renounce his human half and his mother's planet. Gazing in the direction of the Sol system, he fed a minute amount of slack into the short leash on which he kept himself.

 _Jim! Good-bye my... my t’hy’la._ His heart raced and the leash threatened to snap. _This is the last time I will ever permit myself to think of you or even your name again._

“Spock, your thoughts. Open them to me," said T'Sai at last.

Spock braced himself for the mindmeld.

_Forget Earth; think only of Vulcan. You were born here of a Vulcan father, raised here as a Vulcan son…_

At that moment, his stomach dropped. Dread engulfed him.

It was him.

_... the Klingons weren’t destroyed... It feels like... like they’ve become wall exhibits in Hell. And it’s headed for Earth. Spock, I wish you were here to help me understand..._

It was then that he realized the existence of a link. So crude and weakly thrumming that it had escaped his notice all this time. Unintentionally conceived.

T'Sai removed her mind from his and told him what he knew she would say.

"Your answer lies elsewhere."

***

Kirk was never quite the same after Spock melded with him for the first time, as if the Vulcan had marked him somehow. Whether it was a mark, or merely the lasting effects of an alien touch, he didn’t know. He never found the right moment to broach the subject with Spock.

He ground his fingers against his lips as he went over the details of the senceiver memory again and again as the shuttle carried him across the Mediterranean Basin. _The Klingons weren’t destroyed_ , he thought. _It feels like… like they’ve become wall exhibits in Hell. And it’s headed for Earth._ He reached for the mark and sighed. _Spock, I wish you were here to help me understand._

He wrung his hands and forced his thoughts back on contacting the Admiralty. There was an error. Had to be! Despite his deep-space experience and his jurisdiction as a flag officer over fleet deployment, the message carried no intimation that he was summoned back to headquarters.

Unless it wasn’t a mistake. Had he changed so much in three years? Could they see what he had become?

Spock had left. Presumably forever. After everything they had shared, he thought… Well, obviously he thought they could take their relationship to the next level, but at the minimum, he thought they were inseparable.

Weighing risks and acting decisively was Kirk's second nature. _Fortune favors the bold._ The sentiment had served him well many times. Yet the potential for more with regard to his first officer blinded him to the consequences. The close of the mission, which he had complacently dismissed for many months, arrived. The panic deranged him. And the misstep had cost him.

He tried to look out the window, but was intercepted by his startled reflection. He was like a ghost that was haunting himself.

Upon reaching the signal station, he was bombarded with the tightest security. He was verified, placed on hold, and double-verified. Evidently, the organization was determined to keep this Intruder Business classified. He could only guess why, but he had a feeling the situation was going to escalate very quickly. Kirk even found himself hoping that it might. In all the confusion, he might be able to swing something. Something to emancipate himself from the desk to which he had so stupidly exiled himself.

***

The night Spock left, Kirk promised himself that he would never be at somebody's mercy again. That as long as he lived, he would never, ever forget it. Showed his teeth to everybody.

But not a single thing crossed his mind except how good it was to see him. How he would do just about anything to keep him here. Kirk knew all along that Spock cared for him! At least as a brother. Of course he came back. _He came back to me he came back_

_For God's sake look at me. LOOK AT ME._

“Welcome aboard,” Kirk said incredulously.

At that instant, Spock stopped in his tracks. The hairs stood on Kirk’s neck. Had Spock felt him then, touching the mark?

***

"Vessel status operational. Lieutenant Ilia and Commander Decker... list them as _missing_."

"Heading, sir?"

Kirk waved his hand noncommittally. "Out there. Thataway."

_ A most logical choice, Captain. _

Kirk looked over his shoulder at the Vulcan, wondering whether he had heard him or not. It was as if he had spoken in his own head.

Either way, they shared a long warm look.

***

"Come."

Spock stepped inside. He placed his hands behind his back, then at his sides. Kirk rose to meet him. Aware that Kirk was waiting for him to say something, he lifted his eyebrows once and admitted, “I lied.”

He barely managed to get out the words, “I missed you,” before he could no longer help himself and filled his fists with Spock’s uniform.

The rough contact ignited the link with wanton throes. He claimed Kirk’s flushed mouth.

Kirk sighed into him, rolling and brushing his lips against his in the most indulgent way possible.

Spock caressed one of his hands with his first and second fingers in a bizarre but welcome way. Kirk mimicked the gesture, wrapping his own around Spock’s and stroking them.

Spock whimpered his name.

“I want to make love to you.”

Spock hesitated. This was unfolding a bit quickly. Kirk seemed to have made up his mind, however. Very well.

“I am yours. However--” Spock nuzzled his neck. “Jim, I must confess to a lack of... sophistication.”

“Absolved. Next?” His eyes twinkled the way they always did when he teased Spock.

Kirk was kidding, but Spock accepted the invitation. “How can you be so sure--about me? After what I have done?”

Kirk gripped his shoulders. “Prove yourself, if you must. _Take me now_.”

Assignments, Spock could work with. He pushed Kirk against the wall.

His breaths were ribbed with pounds of his heart. He pressed kisses into Kirk’s pulse, marveling at what he had cast aside.

Kirk’s panting increased as Spock dropped to his knees. The sight of Kirk’s desire for him made his mouth water. He found he was panting, too. Had he lived at all before tonight?

Kirk reached for him and tilted his face up, apparently just to look at him.

Spock opened his fingers and loosed himself. “I love you,” he said.

“Thank you.”

***

Kirk woke twice in the night, and found Spock with him both times.

***

“Patch things up?” said the doctor.

Kirk let his hand fall from the small of Spock’s waist, eyes to the floor.

“Well. That’s marvelous.” McCoy looked from Kirk to the Vulcan, smiling and rolling his tongue over his molars. “ _Kissed_?”

**Author's Note:**

> *Stretch: Kirk's nickname for Spock in William Shatner's novel Collision Course, a story of how Kirk meets Spock for the first time. This is the only reference to the novel in this story, however.
> 
> **Spock, it's always been you. You know it's always been you. Say you love me too.: A line ad-libbed by William Shatner during the filming of Turnabout Intruder as a joke. I always found it compelling anyway.
> 
> Note that the underlined text is taken directly from Roddenberry's novelization.


End file.
